I'll be off now

It all started one day when Callum was out mowing his lawn. The grass had grown unusually tall that week, and the sun seemed not to mind at all his pronounced and ever growing resentment of summer weather. He began to think about what better places existed out there; he figured there ought to be about a million jillion places better than Texas right at this moment.

Well, lets see, there’s California. They have nice beaches there, and, well at least he had heard, they had pretty girls there, too. Its hilly and the weathers nice and maybe if he was lucky, he thought, he could go to college there someday. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Callum, a college kid in California! Why, he thought, I could be like those kids in Berklee and go on and make a ruckus about every this and that. I could make one of those big picket signs and go marching around like I was important and otherwise have this fantastic vision of a better world that really has no chance of existing ever. But, he thought it over some more, and realized he didn’t wanna spend a whole bunch of time with pickets or signs. He just wanted to enjoy himself.

Hmmm, what about New York City? They have pretty good weather, and theres always a ton going on. But then you have to figure your chances of getting in some sort of accident or dangerous predicament in a ginormous city like that would go up astronomically, and also they might slap that redneck label on him- just cuz he kinda talked funny or had what amounts to a “texas twang.” This kinda thing shouldn’t stop him from taking a chance on a place, he figured.

“I can see it now, Callum living it up in the big apple.” He might spring out of bed in the morning happy as a blue bird, hop onto that lovely elevator and wave down his big yellow taxi just like a real New Yorker would do it. “Howdy do mister!” he would greet the cab driver with his twanged accent and a big fat smile on his southern face. “I wanna see the Empire State building this mornin!”

“Well, I guess I don’t really really see myself fitting in if you know what I mean.” Callum was still marching along with the lawnmower thinking about all this at the same time, only problem was, he hadn’t been watching where he was going. So he still had a ton of mowing to do. He figured that it wasn’t that big a deal since he was in Texas and there wasn’t anything better to do anyway.

Callum kept on goin and goin and goin until at last he had finished mowing the whole two acres of grass on which he slept and ate and things like that. Of course, he lived in a house and that sort of thing, slept on a bed too. He would want you to know that. His mommy and daddy were very nice to him, fed him and things like that, paid the bills for their nice home on their nice two acres of grass that he just mowed, and just otherwise treated him like he was an only child, which as it turns out Callum was.

Besides all that nice stuff about Callum’s current state of livin’, I think you can tell he was a little bit “in a pickle” about being bored of it all. I mean he mowed those same two acres every week and those thoughts always came to him when he was out there with his lawnmower mowin his lawn.

Well, he had to have figured what exactly was good about being in Texas and living out near no other persons save for his mom and pop. There were the stars for one- can’t quite see them so clear no where else than middle of nowhere Texas. Then there was the quiet peace and calm about the emptiness of their land. It was so open and breathy. The wind swept through all the time and just made the grass bend this way and that and he always thought that was real nice.

When the sun would set, you had never seen something so beautiful. All the sky seemed to be making one of those giant yawns like you make when you’re real tired. And then it would be night and those beautiful stars would come out and just shine and shine and shine til you werent really sure if you were alive no more or maybe you had gone on and died and moved on to the other place. When there was no clouds anywhere, you could see the moon so clear it was like you could reach out and grab apart of it, hold it close to you like it would stay there and be one of your friends or somethin’. These was some of the things Callum liked a whole lot about living in Texas. But I guess he hadn’t really thought about them much, well at least, not as much as the things he didn’t like about Texas.

Night time finally did come around and Callum walked out of his house out to the edge of their lawn, right where the barbed wire fence came up to the edge of that windy dirt road out there. He put his hands on it and just sat there for a little, trying to figure about something. He had lived in Texas his whole life. His mom and pop were real good folk. Heck, they had even taught him how to read and write! His house was cozy and nice and that sort of thing. His room was very special to him too, had a lot of memories in that room. He liked his pillows, his old toy trains and his stuffed animals. He liked his little T.V. and legos and model cars. And last but not least, he really really liked his good ol’ blanket. He had had that blanket since he was just a small child and he never had no other blanket other than that. Why, if he ever did have to go some place for a long while, he would bring that blanket with him. You could be sure of that. And he didn’t even care a cent that it was childish or anything like that.

So even though he maybe had thought some about what else might be bigger or better out there, what places might be cooler or “hipper” than Texas, which places might have better weather and that kind of thing, Callum realized standing out at his barbed wire fence, he quite liked Texas. He figured he would stay here and enjoy those nice pretty stars and that nice big moon. He would mow that lawn every week even though it was hot and all and he would be tired afterward and that sort of thing. Maybe, he thought, someone’s out there wandering this same thing, and maybe they’s thinking they could have something better or bigger or grander. Well, he said, “I hope they’re wrong.”

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